American Logan Sergeant will race for Williams in 2023 after success in F2. Photo / Don Kennedy
When the Formula One season finished in Abu Dhabi, it was time to say goodbye to Sebastian Vettel, Nicholas Latifi, Mick Schumacher and Daniel Ricciardo from the 2023 grid. Vettel had announced his retirement in July this year, having raced in F1 since 2007.
His last two seasons were spent with Aston Martin after he was told by Ferrari halfway through the 2020 Covid-restricted season that his contract wouldn’t be renewed. Ferrari finished sixth in the championship that year, and Vettel only scored 33 points to finish 13th in the driver’s championship, whereas his much younger teammate, Charles Leclerc, was eighth, scoring 98 points. Vettel hoped that joining Aston Martin would revive his flagging career, but it hasn’t worked out that way.
He finished 12th in the championship last year, and repeated that placing this season, although he did miss the first two races due to Covid. He seemed to find his mojo again as the season was coming to an end, but as soon as he told Aston Martin he was retiring, the team quickly announced he would be replaced for 2023 by Alpine driver Fernando Alonso. Despite being the oldest driver on the grid by some four years at 41, Alonso has proved that if his car keeps going, he is competitive, and he is expected to flourish at Aston Martin.
Alonso finished the championship in ninth place, one place and 11 points behind teammate Esteban Ocon. But the latter only had two DNF’s whereas Alonso had five, including the last race in Abu Dhabi, and two other races in which he didn’t finish but was classified. He calculated that he lost at least 70 points through unreliability.
“It’s a little bit sad to finish like that,“ Alonso said in Abu Dhabi. “Even though it’s a goodbye to this team after the weekend, I will always think of Alpine with good memories. I spent nine years of my life with this team and won two championships in the past with Renault, so I wish them well for the future.”
Hamilton also retired from that race, and for the first time in 16 seasons in F1, he hasn’t had a race victory.
“Ultimately, I think we started with a car that we didn’t want, and we finished with a car that we didn’t want, but we were basically stuck with it,” Hamilton lamented. “I hope that the struggles this year really provide us with the tools and the strength to fight for many more championships moving forward.”
Canadian driver Nicholas Latifi has been replaced at Williams by American driver Logan Sargeant. Latifi had three seasons with Williams, and a best finish of seventh in Hungary in 2021. He will be remembered more for the money he brought to the team than the meagre 9 points scored in three years. Sargeant was announced as Williams’ driver by team principal Jost Capito at the USGP in Austin, subject to him securing enough Super Licence points. That objective was achieved in the F2 race in Abu Dhabi, but he has since revealed he was not told he was in the running for the Williams seat until post-Monza.
“To be honest, I was kind of kept out of the loop on that,” Sargeant said. “I think that was done between my managers and Williams. I wasn’t made aware of that until after Monza. That was when it pretty much became concrete as long as I achieved my Super Licence.”
So, how does he think he will go in 2023?
“I feel like as long as I prepare the best I can physically and mentally, put my time in at the factory in Grove and I do everything I possibly can to be the best driver I can be, I have to live with that. Hopefully, that is good enough to stay in F1 for a long time.”
For Mick Schumacher, two seasons with Haas has seen his F1 career seemingly come to a halt, although like Ricciardo, who will be Red Bull’s third driver in 2023, there could be an F1 lifeline for Schumacher at Mercedes as a reserve driver.
Schumacher was asked about his relationship with Haas boss Guenther Steiner.
“Well, I mean, we actually have an okay relationship and I think it will stay that way,” Schumacher told Motorsport.com. “I had Sebastian’s backing. We tried to work through all the points there were to improve, and I think if we compare with the beginning of the year, we really kept the trend going. Especially the race pace was very positive, and then the qualifying pace improved as well. But it wasn’t enough, apparently.”
One reason put forward for Schumacher losing the drive was the number of expensive crashes he had, such as the one in Monaco - whereas Sky Sports commentator Martin Brundle has a different theory.
“I think Haas was just fed up with the environment of Mick Schumacher and all the outside pressure,” Brundle suggests, referring to former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher, who’s Michael’s brother and thus Mick’s uncle.
Brundle is also not surprised that it is Nico Hülkenberg who will replace Mick at Haas.
“At Haas, they are betting on experience and self-assurance rather than youth, because that path did not work for them.”
Hülkenberg is 35 years old and last had a full-time F1 drive in 2019, with Renault, but was replaced for 2020 by Ocon. He has experience, with 181 starts, but also has the dubious record of the most F1 starts without being on the podium, and the most career points without a race win. It is unlikely, based on Haas’ performance in 2022, that he will shake of either of those unwanted records. So, how did Hülkenberg’s return to F1, after being a Super-sub for three seasons, come about?
“I think the last month it got more and more concrete and serious and I was getting more optimistic, confident that we can agree [on] a deal,” the former Williams, Sauber, Force India and Renault driver said.
“It was good for me to have time away to digest, to reflect on some things, [and] change [my] perspective a little bit, too. Sometimes it’s difficult when you have to watch when you’re on the sidelines. This year, watching got a little harder, especially when you analyse and you see and you think you can do better in places, so I started the return project.”
He will return to partner Kevin Magnussen. In 2017, at the Hungarian GP, Hülkenberg remonstrated with Magnussen as he was being interviewed by Sky TV in the media pen, accusing him of lacking sportsmanship on the track. In what has become one of F1′s most memorable, and graphic, reported retorts, Magnussen told Hülkenberg to “suck my balls!”
So, how are the two likely to get on as teammates, given that colourful exchange?
It won’t be an issue, Hülkenberg suggests, because when he replaced Vettel at Aston Martin for the first two races this year, they sorted out any lasting acrimony.
“I expect to have a good relationship,” Hülkenberg says. “We’ve, I think, cleared that incident, and we’ve broken the ice at the beginning of this year. I said hello to him with his exact same words from ‘17. He felt that was quite funny and amusing.”
“I have absolutely no worries working and racing alongside him. I think we are both grown-up adults, we respect each other, and we’ll race for the team, so no problems whatsoever.”
Apart from exchanging offensive words, the Haas pair won’t want to end up like some teammates in the past have, such as Gilles Villenueve and Didier Pironi at Ferrari in 1982, moving through to Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell at Williams in 1987 and Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna at McLaren in 1989. Piquet called Mansell a “blockhead’ in 1988 and made derogatory remarks about Mansell’s wife.
Vettel and Mark Webber clashed on-track as Red Bull teammates in 2010. The team had a code called ‘Multi 21′ to impose team orders - necessary, they felt, because the tangle between the two in Turkey put a livered Vettel out of the race, even though almost everyone agreed the collision was his fault. In Brazil in 2012, Webber cheekily asked where the ‘Multi 21′ switch was in the car.
In recent times, there was a clash between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg at Mercedes in 2015 and 2016. After beating Rosberg in the USGP, Hamilton tossed the runner-up cap to Rosberg in the cooling-down room prior to going onto the podium, only to have a still-fired-up Rosberg toss it back at him. The former friends and friendly rivals were anything but friendly when Rosberg retired five days after becoming world champion in 2016. And although they live in the same complex in Monaco, they are no longer friends, even though Rosberg, as a guest Sky Sport commentator, is usually complimentary about Hamilton these days.
World champion Max Verstappen had a tiff of sorts with Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez in Brazil, which was forgiven, if not forgotten, a while later. The other pairing F1 will watch with interest in 2023 will be the two French drivers, Ocon and Pierre Gasly, teamed together at Alpine. Given they have some acrimonious history as rivals, that is likely to be the most explosive partnership in 2023. If you want to be world champion, they say first you have to beat your teammate. For the top three teams, Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes, there are no changes to the driver line-up, but if F1 rumours are accurate, it is said the days of Mattia Binotto being in charge at Ferrari are numbered.
Sources: F1.com, Sky Sports F1, Motorsport.com.